IJSP Number 4, 2022

62 Competency-based Clinical Supervision: A View to the Future FALENDER Carol 1 1 “Pepperdine” University, Los Angeles, California; University of California, Los Angeles; Emails: Carol.falender@Pepperdine.edu Abstract Some recognition exists that clinical supervision is a distinct professional competence that requires specific education and training. However, it is all too often inadequately addressed in psychology curricula and training. What is required is a shift to the competence movement that has been instituted in United States psychology education, training, and regulation to embrace a systematic and intentional competence model. To achieve this, a major attitude shift must occur to acknowledge the systematic and intentional process of clinical supervision, value the process and components, and incorporate the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that need to be systematically developed as a critical component of self-reflective competency-based education and supervision, portals to lifelong learning, internationally. Key words: clinical supervision, professional competence, training, lifelong learning. 1. Introduction The past decade has been distinguished by increased recognition in both psychology and mental health professions generally that clinical supervision is a distinct professional practice. Clinical supervision is described as the cornerstone of professional training [1, 2]. Through supervision, students are socialized into the ethical, professional, and clinical aspects of client and societal care and their professional identities are shaped. Thus, it requires dedicated training to a level of competence. Internationally, both training and regulation are increasingly addressing this imperative. However, in the U.S. and internationally [3], that level is in evolution or is aspiration or clinical supervision is the missing ingredient [4], with supervision occurring through osmosis, the supervisor practicing through what they absorbed from their own clinical supervision during their training trajectory. Urgency for supervisor competence is increased by the groundswell of reports of inadequate and even harmful clinical supervision from supervisees and the sense that although training is mandated by accreditation [5] the quality and specificity of that training is highly variable and may not be proceeding at all, or not through a lens of respectful cultural humility and systematic practice. Focus will be on the history and origins of competency-based clinical supervision in the frame of cultural humility, evolution of competency-based supervision practice, its current status, and a view of the future.